Gibson Woody Guthrie SJ (Stephen Pate/NJN photo)
The man who wrote and sang “This Land is Your Land” was an inspiration to Bob Dylan and a generation of singers and songwriters. Continue reading
Woody Guthrie’s 1930s Slingerland May Bell guitar worth $70,000 in 2006 at Christie’s NYC (photo Stephen Chernin Getty Images)
We don’t know where many of Woody Guthrie’s guitars are since Woody was fairly casual about property and his guitars.
Arlo Guthrie, his son, has a guitar his father gave him. Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft is supposed to have one as well.
If they were available for sale, Woody’s guitars would be very expensive to buy.
Guitars of famous musicians get premium prices. Bob Dylan’s Fender Stratocaster from the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 is worth $500,000 to $1 million dollars.
I started this journey months ago asking the simple question: how close is the Gibson Woody Guthrie SJ to any guitar Woody Guthrie played. I learned that the Woody Guthrie SJ is very close to the guitar he bought in December 1943, but that was by no means Woody’s only or main guitar.
Lew Dite on autoharp singing Katy Dear
This morning I put Ian Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds
Boy that brought back memories of the 1960s. Before I got my first good guitar, a 1969 Gibson J-45, I had an autoharp just like the one in the amateur video of Katy Dear. Sylvia Tyson had a more expensive one but mine worked pretty well.